South African Leaders Talk State

The former South African president who engineered an end to apartheid said last night that his country was not the only nation guilty of pervasive racial discrimination.

“Apartheid didn’t start in 1948. It wasn’t started by my people, the Afrikaaners,” F. W. de Klerk said in remarks at the Institute of Politics last night.

“Racial discrimination was part of history and the hands of billions of people are dirty of that,” he said.

De Klerk followed that statement with one of regret.

“It’s not enough to acknowledge it,” he said. “It is not enough to say I’m sorry.”

De Klerk’s decision in 1990 to end South Africa’s policies of racial segregation was a milestone for the country, said Tony Leon, a member of the South African parliament and a fellow at the Institute of Politics.

The end of apartheid, he said, was “as if Bush were to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq and increase taxes for rich Americans,” Leon said.

In the early 1980s, de Klerk—then a high-ranking government official—seemed outwardly devoted to the principle of maintaining segregation in the country.

But when he was inaugurated as president, he surprised South Africans by lifting the ban on the African National Congress, giving black leaders in the country a voice. He later organized the country’s first fully democratic constitution.

In 1993, de Klerk, who led South Africa from 1989 to 1994, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years for challenging apartheid policies but later freed by de Klerk.

Julia I. Bertelsmann ’09, an economics concentrator and native of Cape Town, South Africa, said she was impressed by the discussion.

“The speakers were excellent and it was great to hear about de Klerk’s personal experience and Leon’s view on current politics,” Bertelsmann said.

Robert I. Rotberg, a panelist and the director of the Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution, said that the event included “good speeches on contemporary issues” and was “filled with passion.”

“The struggle for freedom in South Africa was a difficult one,” he said. “But it was finally overcome.”

It was not de Klerk’s first time at Harvard. He also appeared at the Institute of Politics in 2001.